It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Bruce Rauner's crimes make him a Quintessential Republican, as the Illinois Governor's Race heats up

Republicans Dan Rutherford and Kirk Dillard have alleged that the latest revelations about GTCR Nursing Home negligence make the Billionaire Bruce Rauner unfit to be the Republican Candidate for Governor in Illinois.

Quite the contrary, Bruce Rauner's willingness to kick old people to the curb and swipe their savings are in direct accordance with established Republican Orthodoxy.

Conservatives and Republicans love criminals; especially as their Governors. Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell are just the latest caught abusing their office for personal gain or vendetta.

Now, Bruce Rauner is a special case. Here in Illinois, the Plutocracy sees a chance to install one of their henchmen in the Governor's Mansion in Springfield.

His career reads much like Mitt Romney's in that he used accounting gimmicks and vulture capitalism to make money. Rauner's firm has been managing the largest Illinois Public Pensions since the 1990's consequently we now have unfunded pension crisis as Rauner has been steadily swindling the Pensions.

From 1999 to 2003, GTCR and THI began acquiring nursing homes with funding from GECC, Ventas and other lenders. THI became one of the nation’s largest health care operators with more than 220 facilities and more than a billion in revenue at that time.

When Medicare money for residents’ rent flowed into the THI account, GECC and Ventas took their share before monies were available to cover payroll, supplies, utilities, etc. for the hundreds of nursing homes, according to evidence presented at trial. Insider operators and former employees began suing GTCR/THI over poor management, as did nursing home residents and their families because of what was described as abysmal care.

Rauner's firm then engaged in active negligence, in order to run their 200+ facilities into insolvency because who cares what happens to the senile old people families can't afford to look after because they were working two jobs each to try and stay afloat during the Ultra-Reactionary Piss Down Your Back Reaganomics era?

Republicans are not in Government to help people, unless you mean Romney People (i.e. Corporations) they are in Government to ensure that wealth is transferred upwards and regular Americans are shackled into Corporate Bondage.

There's nothing fresh, innovative or helpful for Illinois residents coming from Republicans. Illinois has seen their Republicans on the federal level defend taxpayer welfare going to Oil Companies while they also vote to eliminate the Clean Air and Water Act, so those self-same Companies can then dump petcoke or other toxic byproducts into Lake Michigan or where ever they please.

Now, after these latest despicable revelations about the thieving Bruce Rauner came back to the forefront of the Illinois Governor's Race, Dan Rutherford has suddenly found himself in trouble from allegations made by a former attorney who worked for Bruce Rauner.

Rutherford announced — during a hastily called news conference — that a treasurer's office employee who has made "allegations of misconduct" against him was being represented by an attorney who had been on Rauner's payroll. Rutherford said the attorney demanded $300,000 on the employee's behalf to "walk away and keep it under wraps."

Dan Rutherford has also said the issue involves "allegations of personal misconduct" which was looked into by an internal Illinois Treasury Department investigation. The general counsel for the treasurer's office Neil Olson, said outside counsel and a consultant firm had been retained for an independent probe because the treasurer is the accused.

I haven't and won't speculate about what the allegations against Dan Rutherford are because going through people's underwear drawers looking for smut and sniffing crotches is a Republican tradition.

As for Kirk Dillard, I've had personal contact with the man during a fundraising dinner for a State Representative Sandy Pihos. I suppose I could set the scene but the gist is when a person with juice,a DuPage County Judge, walked nearby Dillard pivoted his big belly away and turned a cold shoulder towards myself and someone else who had been asking him difficult questions regarding the Pension crisis.

No matter what Republican wins the nomination for Governor in Illinois we are going to be faced with the prospect of a rapacious servant of the Rich who will be an implacable foe to the Working Man and will use the Awesome Power of Government to transfer as much wealth as possible into the coffers of the Vulture Capitalist Class.

Let's see: In the entire History of the Democratic Republic 100% of Presidents and 100% of Vice Presidents who have resigned in utter disgrace with potential criminal charges pending over their heads have been:

No Chickenhammer, just no. Bruce Rauner is not the Governor nor has he ever been. What I pointed out are the attributes which make him a Quintessential Republican (i.e. a criminal). Rauner made money by stealing from Public Pensions and accounting gimmicks (see: Mitt Romney) and Rauner made money by mistreating Old People and metaphorically pushing them off a cliff (see: Paul Ryan).

So, what makes Rauner a Republican are his mistreatment of the elderly and poor and thievery.

Hey Andrew, you forgot the two other ones accused of a crime. Both Republicans. I especially love the Len Small case where he was acquitted of corruption by a jury of his peers. Eight of whom received state jobs. Please don't make it sound as if Democrats are the only corrupt ones,

Vulture Capitalist Bruce Rauner is the quintessential hypocrite. He condemns taxes that pay the bills and for the services of government (ie, pensions), but he's more than willing to own stake in companies that bill MILLIONS of dollars to Medicare and/or Medicaid. And, as some charge, even willing to take part in a cheat to get those dollars. Court records show one of his companies knowingly let elderly people suffer in the interest of maximizing profit.

His flip-flop position on a minimum wage hike is equally self-serving and almost as appalling. Depending on who he's talking to, he is either for it or against it. No one can live a self-sufficient existence on $8 and change an hour, it's preposterous. Yet here's Bruce Rauner, who in 2012 made ONE MILLION DOLLARS A WEEK ($53 million dollars in 2012), on record willing to deny a sliver of dignity to fringe-dwellers who get up in the morning, take a bus they can't afford to ride to a dead-end job they can't afford to lose, perfectly willing to throw these people on the street.

He personifies the maladies of economic inequality that plague our nation today. While other countries are working toward more equitable economic policies, greed-mongers like Rauner are looking for new ways to disadvantage others. Why? See, here's a "secret" that rich people pay a LOT of attention to: every dollar in someone else's pocket means a dollar less in their pocket. Simple ecomonics, which most of us give little thought. But to black-souled monsters like Rauner, this torments them, haunts them. That dollar should be theirs, the obsess.

In fairness, it may not be his fault. I believe in the theory that insatiable greed is a real disorder. It is an addictive, compulsive psychological dysfunction or defect from which Rauner suffers, possibly incurably. Rapacious avarice. He can no more dismiss his greed than can one will their eye color to change.

So what do the helplessly rapacious, avaricious do? They attack the weakest. They don't go after other rich people. They can defend themselves. They go after the poor first, and work their way up the economic food chain in a distributed assault designed to reap huge gains by taking a small amount (laughingly insignificant relative to his wealth) from the greatest number of people possible. How better to do this than to control the government. We see it everywhere already. It's at the core of the exploding wealth gap in the US. You can't have the foxes guarding the hen house.

So, it only makes sense that Rauner would attack the unions. This is because he knows that unions (not without their issues, to be sure) stand as a last remaining defensive force resisting the devolution of America to a third-world plutocracy/corpocracy. Something that would further profit Rauner immensely. Removing the unions from the equation would lower the economic bar for most everyone who works for a living. By that argument, unions (like them or not) serve to raise the labor standard.

For the record, I'm not a socialist, or Marxist, nor do I subscribe to any philosophy that approaches communism. It's human nature to strive to do better, to improve your economic position. I think capitalism, in the correct balance, is very healthy for an society. But what Rauner wants perverts the virtues of opportunity which 99% (or so) of us hold dear.

"I've visited your site before, and I want to tell you this isn't personal, but I don't like your smarmy comments and the way you conduct yourself..."- Blue Pit Bull

"Come back and post when you have some actual LIFE EXPERIENCE to tell us about, you callow and craven ignoramus." - Bloviating Zeppelin

"...you do a good job describing the obvious in a form of intelli-rage that comes across fresh and to the point." - Gwendolyn H. Barry.

"I hate your blog, so when it appeared on my Wordpress' "incoming links" (for no apparent reason), I was all set to mock this entry, but I found nothing wrong with it whatsoever..." - Francois Tremblay

One last thing before I go. I made a CPD friend aware of your blog. He doesn't think you're genuine either but he's looking into you and your posts. But whatever the case he's looking for you and if he finds you he wants for all of your colleagues to see your blog and where you stand on the issues. Later homie! - ChickenHammer